Meta has experienced better-than-expected sales across the second quarter of 2024, bolstered by investments in AI which are helping it provide more targeted advertising.
Posting £30.5 billion in revenue and earnings of £4.04 per share, the tech giant outperformed analysts’ expectations of around £29.7 billion in revenue and £3.68 per share. As a result, Meta’s stock price has grown around 5% following the update.
Despite also registering strong earnings in Q1, market concerns for its performance across the rest of the year led Meta’s stock to fall by as much as 16%, before bouncing back over the following months. These concerns have been somewhat mitigated by the latest earnings report.
The news comes as the WhatsApp and Instagram owner continues to invest heavily in AI, with a focus on further developing large language models to improve AI chatbots, alongside continued investment in the brand’s AI smart glasses and virtual reality headsets.
“We had a strong quarter, and Meta AI is on track to be the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year,” Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg said.
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“We’ve released the first frontier-level open source AI model, we continue to see good traction with our Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, and we’re driving good growth across our apps.”
Meta has also been harnessing AI to improve the efficiency and quality of its advertising, improving targeting and personalisation through the use of algorithms that can better determine the best time and place in which to show an ad.
The firm is also developing features that will enable smaller brands with more limited budgets to still develop competitive campaigns and promotions.
In a statement, Meta added: “While we continue to refine our plans for next year, we currently expect significant capital expenditures growth in 2025 as we invest to support our artificial intelligence research and product development efforts.”
